![]() He also described the antibacterial action on human tissue of a species of mould he called Penicillium glaucum but did not publish his results. Joseph Lister, an English surgeon and the father of modern antisepsis, observed in November 1871 that urine samples contaminated with mould also did not permit the growth of bacteria. In 1871, Sir John Scott Burdon-Sanderson reported that culture fluid covered with mould would produce no bacterial growth. The technique was mentioned by Henryk Sienkiewicz in his 1884 novel With Fire and Sword. In 17th-century Poland, wet bread was mixed with spider webs (which often contained fungal spores) to treat wounds. In England in 1640, the idea of using mould as a form of medical treatment was recorded by apothecaries such as the botanist John Parkinson, who advocated the use of mould in his book on pharmacology. However, ancient practitioners could not precisely identify or isolate the active components in these organisms. These treatments often worked because many organisms, including many species of mould, naturally produce antibiotic substances. Many ancient cultures, including those in Australia, China, Egypt, Greece and India, independently discovered the useful properties of fungi and plants in treating infection. Research that aims to circumvent and understand the mechanisms of antibiotic resistance continues today. Shortly after their discovery of penicillin, the Oxford team reported penicillin resistance in many bacteria. Agriculture became a major user of penicillin. It was discovered that adding penicillin to animal feed increased weight gain, improved feed-conversion efficiency, promoted more uniform growth and facilitated disease control. The drug was synthesised in 1957, but cultivation of mould remains the primary means of production. This led to the development of semisynthetic penicillins that were more potent and effective against a wider range of bacteria. Dorothy Hodgkin determined its chemical structure, for which she received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964. Alexander Fleming, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery and development of penicillin.Īfter the end of the war in 1945, penicillin became widely available. ![]() During the Second World War penicillin became an important part of the Allied war effort, saving the lives of thousands of soldiers. The private sector and the United States Department of Agriculture located and produced new strains and developed mass production techniques. They derived its chemical structure and determined how it works. They carried out experiments with animals to determine penicillin's safety and effectiveness before conducting clinical trials and field tests. ![]() They developed a method for cultivating the mould and extracting, purifying and storing penicillin from it, together with an assay for measuring its purity. In 1939, a team of scientists at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford, led by Howard Florey that included Edward Abraham, Ernst Chain, Mary Ethel Florey, Norman Heatley and Margaret Jennings, began researching penicillin. The work on penicillin at St Mary's ended in 1929. The mould was found to be a variant of Penicillium notatum (now called Penicillium rubens), a contaminant of a bacterial culture in his laboratory. While working at St Mary's Hospital in London in 1928, Scottish physician Alexander Fleming was the first to experimentally determine that a Penicillium mould secretes an antibacterial substance, which he named "penicillin". Following the production of a relatively pure compound in 1942, penicillin was the first naturally-derived antibiotic.Īncient societies used moulds to treat infections, and in the following centuries many people observed the inhibition of bacterial growth by moulds. The history of penicillin follows observations and discoveries of evidence of antibiotic activity of the mould Penicillium that led to the development of penicillins that became the first widely used antibiotics. Glass phial of British Standard penicillin ![]()
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